Friday, January 20, 2017

Kaby Lake comes to desktop: here is what you need to know

Intel has finally taken the veils off of its 7th
generation core Kaby Lake processors. The
announcement came at the grand floors of CES and with it, the immediate
availability of Intel’s latest family of desktop processors. From what
Technoprozium has learnt, retail availability can be expected around halfway
through January 2017 with e-tailer already offering the parts online. We have
already covered the Kaby Lake architecture andperformance expectation in detail, it’s time to get things official. Here, we’ll
try to sum-up the most important aspects of this launch and pass the
verdict. Let’s go.

First of all, here is more comprehensive list of core Kaby Lake processors. The prices are in US dollar, hence, you
need to convert those into Indian rupee first.

**Any part/model number ending with “K” means the processor is
unlocked and overclockable. Likewise, the suffix “T” stands for low energy.

Looking up the chart, two things immediately caught our attention – the
anticipated overclocking i3-7350K which we talked about in our preview and the
inclusion of “Hyper Threading” (HT) in Pentium series of processor! HT is
Intel’s approach to Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) where a physical CPU core
is capable of running multiple process-threads independently. As a result, the
operating system and apps recognizes each physical core as two logical cores.
HT is an efficient way to boost a processor’s multicore performance but Intel
kept this feature exclusive to its i7 and i3 line-up, until now. If the info on
company’s website is correct then it seems that Intel has decided to enable the
entry-level Pentiums with two extra logical cores which makes them almost as
potent as the i3 processors. This is good news for users and builders alike,
specially the ones with budget constrain. The same however may not be said
about the much hyped i3-7350K! The prospect of an overclockable i3 that can
match the very best in single threaded performance sounds awesome; but at ~INR12K
($180) it’s hovering around i5 territory and kinda defeats the purpose! If you
consider the cost of a good after market cooler which you’ll need in order to
get the best out of this chip, it’s not a value proposition for budget builders.
We think a price point of ~10K would’ve been much more practical. The rest of
the line-up is pretty much a standard affair and the new 7th gen
processors aren’t much different from their Skylake based predecessors. The
architecture, core count and TDP remain identical with the previous generation,
so does the distribution of last level cache. Without any IPC improvement, what
Kaby Lake brings to the table is raw
frequency increment. Intel’s improved 14nm+ process tech enables the new chips
to hit higher base and turbo clock – upto 4.5GHz as in the case with the
flagship i7-7700K. All desktop parts receive this boost, down to the i3-7100
which is up 200MHz compared to its predecessor i3-6100. The Integrated Memory controller
(IMC) in Kaby Lake processors now supports DDR4 2400MHz
out of the box, instead of 2133MHz, restoring memory speed parity between
Intel’s HEDT and mainstream platforms. We also have a new graphics in form of
HD 630 with a powerhouse of a media engine.

Kaby
Lake reviews are out too
and here are links to two prominent hardware review sites – Tom’s Hardware and
The Tech Report. Most of what they found out falls inline with our earlier
assumptions but we still need to pickup the most important bits. So, here is
what Technoprozium thinks –

Kaby Lake CPUs may not be the IPC
champion we’ve all been waiting for but thanks to Intel’s refined 14nm
manufacturing process they are the fastest mainstream processors one can
buy right now. The frequency boost helps the new chip move past Skylake,
albeit ever so marginally. It’s the single threaded applications that benefit
most but then single-thread performance was never Intel’s weak point. That
advantage however shrinks in benchmarks and apps which utilize multiple
cores and almost evaporates out of the window once the clocks are same! If
you are sitting on a good Skylake processor or a Haswell even, we don’t
see any tangible benefit in upgrading to Kaby. Also with Ryzen on horizon (no
pun intended), the wiser course would be to wait and see what kind of competition
it can provide.

The
same is true for the gamers within you, even more so. Most modern games
are graphics bound and even a five years old overclocked Sandy Bridge
processor is still fast enough for most of the tittles out there. The mere
increment of couple of hundred megahertz does almost nothing for your FPS
(frames per second) and the money is better spent on a graphics card
upgrade.

If you
are in the market for a new build then we don’t see any reason not to opt
for Kaby Lake. Unless of course, you get a
better bargain on the out going processors which given Intel’s pricing policy
is a very rare occurrence. Intel has also launched the 200-series chipsets
codenamed “Union Point” along with the new chips. Built around the same
LGA-1151 socket, both the new processors and chipsets are completely
compatible with now older Skylake platform which provides some extra
options to the system builder. Just remember that you’d have to flash the
BIOS of older 100-series motherboards with the latest firmwire before you
can install a Kaby
Lake processor. Most
motherboard makers have already provided optimized firmwire for that
purpose on their websites.

If
you’re going to build a high-end Kabylake system, you should pair your
i7/i5 CPUs with motherboards based on the Z270, H270, and B250 chipsets. Apart
from out-of-the-box compatibility, these newer chipsets offer extra PCIe /
HSIO (High Speed Input Output) lanes which translate into more
connectivity options i.e. extra
USB, LAN or SATA ports. Optane storage devices are also supported only on
this new platform. Based on Intel’s 3D XPoint memory technology, Optane is
going to sit between your SSD/HDD and RAM as an intermediate memory
subsystem. With no words on its pricing and availability, we still think
Optane is a futuristic and niche product and not something you should base
your buying decisions on.

We’ll
say this upfront: there is nothing exceptional about Kaby Lake’s
overclocking ability. It seems that the high default clock-speed doesn’t
leave much headroom and these chips hit their limits at around 4.8 with
reasonably good cooling equipments. Then there is the silicon lottery
factor which according to Tom’s Hardware is very much into play within
early retail samples. So, unless you’re quiet confident in your ability to
detect golden chips, don’t expect much of a free lunch here. Power
consumption and thermal characteristics of Kaby Lake processors are pretty
similar to their Skylake counterparts; if anything, the new silicon seems
to be tad more athirst for power – 14nm+ not withstanding. The overall
efficiency is still pretty excellent though, particularly when compared to
AMD’s offerings.

The
new HD 630 integrated graphics is based upon older HD 530 and performs
very similarly in gaming benchmarks. While it’s good for casual 720p
gaming, AMD’s Kaveri APUs still offer better performance and value. It
looks like, this time around all of Intel’s effort went into redesigning
the new media engine which is now more efficient and packs some potent
features for home entertainment. With dedicated hardware acceleration for
10-bit HEVC/VP9 decode and 10-bit HEVC/8-bit VP9 encode, the new IGP is a
great solution for streaming 4K content. An enhanced Quick-Sync offers better
quality transcoding by utilizing the Execution Units (EU). These are good
news for users who don’t have the luxury of discrete graphics cards, yet
want to turn their desktops/laptops into capable media center PCs.

Last
but not least, Kaby Lake CPUs are properly supported only on Windows-10; like
it or not, that’s the only way going forward according to Microsoft. Also,
Intel’s Speed-shift (enhanced version of “Speed-step”) technology which
adjusts processor frequency according to the workload only works with
Windows-10. Introduced with Skylake processors, Speed-shift makes the CPU
in-charge of on-the-fly frequency scaling, rather than the OS. This way,
the CPU reaches its optimal peak much faster which makes the system feel
snappier and more responsive.

So, there you have it! Kaby Lake
is essentially Skylake with a frequency boost coupled with newer (and better)
chipsets. The extra speed along with the new media engine and improved
Speed-shift make the 7th-gen Intel processor an ideal choice for
laptops/notebooks and entry-level desktops. The high-end landscape however remains
mostly unscathed and it will remain so until AMD re-enters the frame with
Ryzen. For the better part of last 10 years, Intel has been fighting its own
shadow and the Kaby
Lake is an obvious
product of that stagnation. The company is in the midst of a big migration –
from an intense Tick-Tock to a relatively relaxed but steady Tick-Tock-Tock
development model. From that perspective Kaby Lake is definitely a milestone as
it represents the 2nd Tock or optimization phase; form every other
angle, it’s a very modest launch.